UNEXPECTED BENEFITS
I always try to take the unexpected things and make them work
for me. Paul Watson
It was with a certain amount of
trepidation that I agreed to an early-morning appointment last week to sign a
client's will and powers of attorney. She wanted to get this done before her
surgery Thursday and no other time would work for our respective schedules.
The problem was my commute. My
route to work each morning takes me past six different schools - two elementary
schools, two middle schools, one high school, and a community college. Between
school-zone speed limits, crossing guards, school buses, and swarms of
automobiles, each school creates a tremendous traffic jam for about 30 minutes
around their starting times.
The challenge is that there is no
alternative route and each school starts at a different time. By trial and
error, I've identified the optimal time to leave my house. I've learned that
leaving too early or too late invariably ensnares me in the congestion at one
school or another and makes my commute much longer.
I knew that getting out of my
normal commuting pattern to meet an early appointment would mean getting stuck
in traffic as I approached the various schools. But because of her serious
anxiety about getting the documents signed before the surgery, I bit the bullet
and said yes.
I left super early that morning in
anticipation of traffic jams, telling myself to stay patient behind those lines
of school buses. So you can imagine my delight when I realized that last week
was SPRING BREAK in our area! It was smooth sailing all the way to work. What a
sweet and unexpected surprise to encounter no crossing guards, no school buses,
no swarms of minivans filled with children trying to get to school and parents
anxious to drop off their precious cargo and get to work.
I actually arrived 20 minutes early
and was able to spend a little extra time with my client reassuring her about
the planning I'd done for her and her upcoming medical procedures. It was time
well spent for both of us; a bright spot in my day and hers too.
There's an old saying that "no
good deed goes unpunished," but I believe the opposite to be true: no good
deed goes unrewarded. As we strive to attend to the needs of others, our own concerns
are kindly addressed. It doesn't necessarily happen immediately or every time,
but whether in this life or the next, the books are ultimately balanced and the
tables are graciously leveled. Often, they're even tilted in our favor. They
definitely were for me last week.
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